Which Fintech started in a basement in Stockwell, has done over £65bn of FX business, do over 1 million transfers a year with 600 staff in 7 offices, whose chairman is a former deputy Governor of the Bank of England and according to price comparison sites offer better prices than other Fintech FX players on virtually all sizes of deal?

Worldfirst as many of you might not have guessed (though those of you reading this online will have had a huge hint in terms of the banner above 😀

Jonathan Quin their co-founder and CEO for 14yrs joins us today to discuss the art and science of international expansion – a truly vital step if UK Fintechs are ever to move beyond a potential audience of 1% of the world’s population to far far more.

Topics discussed on the show include:

the Isle of Mull; its mild climate

how to get there

Jonathan’s career journey in particular always wanting to form his own business before he was 30 and inspiration behind that

WorldFirst former a year before Zopa which is often taken as the start of the modern era of “Fintech” per se

before 2004 there was pretty much only hedge funds in terms of new independent FS players

they raised no capital to start and self-funded, “start small, think big, move fast”; the relationship between this and Jonathan’s long tenure and WorldFirst’s very solid growth

their formula is to keep the product core about 70% unchanged and 30% localised

eg in Singapore they hire someone on a moped to drive round every day and collect cheques

pricing is different

speed of payment is different (eg slower in the US)

some of the necessary adaptations only become clear when you are in the market and you learn the hard way

control challenges

it can take a loooong time to really understand a local culture

Jonathan’s biggest challenge in the expansion has been that it is that much harder to “read” some in an unfamiliar culture than it is on one’s own (particularly crossing language boundaries)

challenges even if everyone speaks English (Iceland vs Japan qv)

China is their biggest market

local rules which in some aspects may be laxer, some tighter

the importance of respecting and being interested in the local culture (and complete no-no of judging cultures different from your own)

Correct Assessment of RIsk

“people often over-price risk, they worry about risk too much, or they are irrational about risk”

Jonathan’s metric is to be at least 70% sure of what the risk is – you will never get to 100%

WorldFirst’s survey of the main reason more businesses don’t expand “it’s a hassle”, too busy with their existing business that they never got round to it

equally many business do not go abroad due to over-estimating the risk compared to their returns – eg fraud rates which whilst always a concern might be a fraction of the profit margin

Organisational structure

their model is to pair one person who understands them and HQ, ethics etc and one local who understands the local market, partners, business approach, how to hire

ideally the latter will have been educated not far from (in cultural terms) their UK approach

“You have to carve out [of the organogram] and prioritise international expansion .. the person we have sits outside other reporting lines and reports directly [to the CEO] so that the internal immune system of the business does not close in on that and kill it as it’s a hassle and a worry and a risk”

Choosing where to go

rational approach (where there is a lot of importing/exporting, where banks rates look high etc)

if you solely rely on this you risk missing opportunities and so you must also look at your gut feel – you need to get out on a plane, meet people and talk to them